


it's a bad bad ritual (but it calms me down)

by davepetasprite



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Solar Eclipse Fun Times, Unrelated Strilondes, also..........magic, no-sburb au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 06:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11868861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davepetasprite/pseuds/davepetasprite
Summary: It's the solar eclipse, and Rose busts out a new novella to summon an old friend.





	it's a bad bad ritual (but it calms me down)

**Author's Note:**

> this is really sappy and gay bc i am also sappy and gay but jeeze whoops the summary makes it sound like rose is fucking summoning dave. maybe next time. anyway here's a very quickly written drabble ???? hopefully the rushed context excuses the undoubtedly low quality but anyway
> 
> happy uhhhhhhh solar eclipse i fucking guess? this celestial event is daverose territory now, fuckers
> 
> posting this just as the eclipse goes down btw im riding that high
> 
> (i'll probably go over this later and fix shit up. either that or delete it in shame. get it while it's hot)

"And you think this is actually gonna work... why?" Dave asks from behind her, and she sighs before tugging a heavy tome from the top shelf.

"You picked this precise moment to become a skeptic," she says, turning and blowing the comedically thick layer of dust from the book in his face.

He leans back and grimaces. "Hey don't take it personally, but the last batch of spells you stole from the era where people didn't know what a fucking toothbrush was were duds. Plus the whole solar eclipse schtick is cliched to hell and back. Emphasis on the hell."

She ignores him and lowers the book to the floor. Dave stays stubbornly on his feet, and she nods to the conservatory door. "Be a dear and lock that for me."

"You know I love it when you sweet-talk me like that," he says, but begrudgingly obliges, stepping carefully around Rose's current collection of black candles and red string and other overly occultish items on the floor. When he turns back to her, she's already knee-deep in book. He nudges an especially suspicious pile with the toe of his shoe and flashes her an confused glare. "Did you raid my stash? Again?"

"Kind of creepy that you can recognise your own supply of bones so readily," she says, flipping through the pages.

"Bullshit." He nudges a bone away from the others. "This is the skull of that dead crow you helped me dig outta the AC units."

"It's so cute when you remember romantic things like that."

He grimaces, then, unsatisfied with her complete lack of reaction, groans.

She finally looks at him, dusting her hands off on her jeans. "A total solar eclipse matching the conditions specified only roll around every so often, Dave," she says.

"But that means you stole them from my _room_ \--"

"Sacrifices must be made in the name of progress."

"--in _Texas_. A _month_ ago."

"Are you accusing me of premeditated robbery?"

"I'm accusing you of being a terrible girlfriend."

She holds a hand to her chest in mock horror. "A terrible girlfriend? Dave, you wound me. This fragile heart of mine can only take so much abuse."

"You could'a just asked and I'd have given 'em to you," he complains, shaking his head and staring up at the sky as though seeking sympathy from the universe itself. The universe, as it happens, takes notice and gives a shrug as if to say, "I dunno man," but Dave can't see it through the tint of his shades and returns his attention back to Rose.

"I know." She smiles at him. "Surely it isn't a crime to assume permission in advance when I know you would've given it anyway?" He rolls his eyes.

"So what do we need to do?"

"We?" she asks.

"Well yeah," he says, getting to his knees in front of her--admittedly, not an especially unfamiliar stance to him. "If you're gonna get dick-deep in the shit I'm in it with you. Not about to stand aside and watch you get dragged to hell by Beezlebub 'cause you knocked over a fucking candle."

"Oh, so you're assisting on the assumption that I'll fuck something up? Rude, and frankly uncalled for."

"Nah, listen, I'm your insurance. A demon busts out of your pentagram it'll go for me first." He holds his arms wide, palms up, presenting himself like something visceral and resplendent on a silver plate. "I'm a fine slice of ass, Rose, irresistable. You won't find better demon bait this side of Florida."

"And you know this... how?"

The edges of his mouth twitch. "Worked on you, didn't it?"

She snorts at him. "Hand me that string and the knife, demon-bait."

 

They work together to set up the ritual, following the guidelines to the poorly-scribed letter until Dave and Rose are on their knees in front of a large, complex circle laid out in thin red thread. The edges of both inner and outer rings are wound around the wicks of several tall black candles, and bones lie fragmented in the spaces beneath the string. Rose finishes carving a sigil into the base of a smaller white candle and tosses her knife to the side before shoving her hair from her face and eyeing the sky carefully. Dave means to follow her gaze, but then the light plays against the length of her lashes and the sweep of her cheekbone and his mind goes blank for a long moment. She breaks him out of it when she tugs at her headband and tucks her hair more securely beneath it, and he blinks suddenly.

"What?" he asks, and she looks at him, bemused.

"I said, we're right on schedule. Could you pass me the skull?"

He looks at the circle. "Didn't we already put it in?"

"No, the other one. The... zoologically curious one."

"You mean the fucking crocodile skull?"

"We've been over this. It's not a crocodile. And we need it for a conduit."

"Fine, the weird fucking crocodile skull."

"It isn't a crocodile!"

"The really weird fucking crocodile skull."

"Dave."

"Ok, ok," he mutters, reaching off to the side and hooking his fingers around the eye socket of the _slightly_  misshapen skull. He tugs it over and hands it to her, and their fingers brush over the polished bone and his heart stops beating for a single, brilliant second. Then she pulls away, holding the skull in one hand and reaching for the knife in the other, and he lays a hand on her wrist. "Wait."

She looks at him, arching a brow. "What?" The skull thuds into her lap as he kisses her gently, one hand on her jaw, thumb brushing her cheek. The dust motes in the air orbit them slowly, lit up with the same light that graced her so heavenly before, a silent audience of thousands. She presses into him, sliding hands into his hair and holding him still just as he goes to pull away, deepening the kiss until Dave forgets where they are and what they're doing, and it's only when Rose's phone chimes with a three-second bass drop that the two of them recall reality. They both jump in surprise, kiss broken by the gnarled hand of Fate and also, as Dave reads before Rose tucks her phone away again, Jade's pesterchum messages.

GG: you two need to stop kissing or you will miss the eclipse!!  
GG: you can thank me later when im awake lol :P

Rose takes a quiet breath and collects herself, tucking her hair back again in a reflexive motion that leaves strands sticking up, and Dave snorts before fixing it for her. She doesn't move for a moment, raking her eyes over the ritual circle to confirm that everything was ready and absolutely not just to enjoy the feeling of his fingers threading gently through her hair.

"Alright," she mutters, nodding to herself as she scans the page again. "Binding must be complete before the full obfuscation of the sun... mumble mumble majyyk bullshit blah blah..." She nods a final time, and he watches as she places the completely normal and in no way weird-looking crocodile skull in the centre of the circle--really the weirdest thing about the skull is how small it is, barely the length of his forearm--and sits back to wait.

It doesn't take long. The shadow growing over them now blankets the entire room, and as the last sliver of light curves into nothing, Rose lights her candle and holds it to each of the black wicks in quick succession. Dave watches them burn, still unconvinced despite witnessing several of Rose's previous successful spells--they were all flukes where he's concerned. Just strange coincidences. If Rose didn't take this sort of shit so seriously he'd still be cracking jokes about _Charmed_.

His vaguely amused expression drops like the mic after a hot fucking onstage flame at the sight of the wicks flaring up with a ferocity that, to be honest, seems unnecessary from bulk-bought dollar-store candles, and the moment the fire hits the red thread he feels it in the air. The hair on his arms raise and his teeth vibrate, and the look in Rose's triumphant, illuminated eyes is scary enough on its own without the high-pitched screams that emit from the thread as it catches and is immediately consumed, leaving behind an unnaturally thick, heavy ash that hits the floor with an audible thud. A strange line of sourceless, ethereal light hangs in the air where the thread once was, before it bends inwards and encircles the skull. Dave's jaw hangs the fuck open until he notices and closes it--ok, so maybe he isn't quite that surprised that this shit is legit. This is Rose he's talking about, after all. He doesn't know why he didn't believe her from the beginning.

The light wraps around the skull, moulding to its contours and layering until the shade of the eclipse is burned away, and even with his shades Dave has to turn away to keep his eyeballs whole and un-seared in his head. In the flurry of heatless brilliance he reaches out for Rose at his side, and meets her hands as they reach for him in turn.

"Rose?" he gasps, alarmed, too loud for the silent room even as it seems to burn like someone uncaptchalogued a sun in here, and she tightens her grasp on him in assurance.

Then it's dark again.

Or--it's not dark, the sun is back, somehow, though he'd thought it would take hours for the eclipse to clear and he's certain they've spent only moments bathed in the blinding ritual light.

Dave and Rose meet panicked gazes as soon as they're able, trying to look each other over for injuries without actually looking like they're doing anything so gooey and... attached. As soon as it's obvious that they're both unharmed, they turn as one to look at the skull.

Or rather, where the skull once was.

"Oh," Rose says, at the same time that Dave says "Ha!"

"I fucking _told_ you it was a crocodile," he crows, looking back at her with a grin.

"That's _not_ a crocodile!" she exclaims, surprise overridden by indignation as she turns to him. "Dave, exactly how many bipedal crocodiles have you seen with bright orange skin before?"

"One more than five minutes ago," he says, still grinning, and she huffs.

"Nak," says the bipedal crocodile with bright orange skin.

Rose cocks her head at it for a moment. "Cute," she finally says.

Dave makes a face at her. "Cute? That's your definition of cute? A backyard full of mutant cats and you think this is cute?"

"It isn't as cute as a full-blown demonic entity would have been," she admits, but scoots closer to the jittering reptile.

"Nak nak," it says.

"Yes, we heard," says Rose.

"So. What... like, what're we doing now?" Dave asks, after a few minutes of watching Rose study the crocodile.

"Well..." she murmurs, "I suppose we should name it while we're waiting for the next solar eclipse."

"Great," he groans, and lies back on the floor, staring up at the cloudless sky. "So we've adopted a potentially hellish crocodile. You know we could've been doing, I don't know, literally anything else today? Like, maybe watching the actual eclipse instead of getting blinded by Satan's burning asshole?"

"Watch your mouth in front of our poor son Azazel," Rose says, now close enough to clutch the thing to her chest in mock horror. He jerks his head up to glare at her.

"Rose, we talked about this. We agreed our firstborn would be named Gambino."

"We aren't naming him after Donald Glover's alter-ego."

"We aren't naming it Azazel, either."

"Well, his full name would be Azazel von Vaudeville Lalonde," she says, and he sits up in outrage.

"Fucking excuse me? Azazel von Vaudeville Strider, thanks Rose," he argues.

"Nak nak nak nak nak," says Azazel, squirming in Rose's arms.

When Rose's phone chimes again, it goes unnoticed.

**Author's Note:**

> also all of this shit was chosen on the fly. why a nakkodile? why azazel? why von vaudeville?? the world may never know


End file.
